Blue NoteMarcus Strickland: tenor / alto / sopranino saxophones, bass clarinet; Keyon Harrold: trumpet; Mitch Henry: keyboards; Kyle Miles: bass; Charles Haynes: drums; Weedie Braimah: percussion, vocals; Bilal, Akie Bermiss, Jermaine Holmes: vocals; Pharoah Monch: rap; Greg Tate, Melanie Charles, Kasey Hearns, Petra Richterova, Angelika Beener, Vanessa Strickland, Dawn McGee Strickland: spoken word"I'm thinking about where we came from," says Strickland, "and how that clashes and goes hand in hand with what we've created here as Black Americans." This explains the album’s title and the range of musical styles that he combines in an effort to reflect the aims of this aspiration. The first element of this is evident on the opening track, ‘Lullaby’ which pairs Braimah’s djembe and batas with Strickland’s saxophone lines. For the most part, Strickland seems to be aiming for melodies that have the simplicity of folk harmonies, mixing in a wide range of the percussion styles.

Several of the tracks owe a debt the sort of jazz-fusion that was being played in clubs back in the eighties, while others bring in more contemporary rhythms from trap, hip-hop and related styles. This leads to such a melange of styles that it is not easy to find the musical centre of the album. But, perhaps, the point of not having a centre means that this becomes a collection that moves between different experiences and emotions. In order to give a sense of meaning to the set, Strickland has incorporated spoken word on a few of the tunes here. So, he telephones family and friends to ask them what the phrase “black love” means to them, and weaves this into the playing of ‘Black Love’, or has women reading lines about the dangers that black men face of the street in America, on ‘Cloaked in controversy’.

There is, of course, a long tradition of using ‘found speech’ to fuse with tunes in order to highlight the sentiments of the music and you can the intention here, even if the editing might have been a little tighter. While Strickland is well known for his sax playing, on this set he also uses the bass clarinet (on ‘Aim High’, track 10, and ‘On my mind’, track 4), which he plays with grace and delicacy. He does cut loose on sax on ‘Restlessness’ (track 5), but for rest of the album his role seems to be as musical director, making sure that the various singers blend with his TwiLife band.

Reviewed by Chris Baber

ECM celebrates 50 years of music production with the Touchstones series of re-issues